ChronologyJanuary 16, 2018–April 15, 2018

ABBREVIATIONS

Al-Ahram

AJ

Al Jazeera
Al Arabiya

AP

The Associated Press BCC

Bloomberg
CNN

Daily Sabah DS

The Daily Star (Lebanon)

Dawn (Pakistan)
France24

The Guardian GN

Gulf News

Haaretz

JP

The Jerusalem Post

JT

The Jordan Times

LA

Times (The Los Angeles Times)

LM

Le Monde

NPR

National Public Radio

NYT

The New York Times

RFE/RL

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Reuters

VOA

Voice of America

WP

The Washington Post

WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

Arab-Israeli Conflict
See also Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Saudi Arabia

Jan. 16: The United States Department of State announced that the US would withhold $65 million in aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), which provided support and basic services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere. The withheld funds represented more than half of the US's promised contribution to UNWRA, which had received $355 million from the US in 2017. Critics noted that the decision, along with US president Donald Trump's December 6 announcement that the US would move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, would complicate efforts to restart the peace negotiations that had faltered in 2014. [Guardian, Reuters, 1/16]

Jan. 17: Israeli forces conducted a nighttime raid in the West Bank city of Jenin that culminated in a shootout and the death of at least one suspect of a drive-by shooting of an Israeli rabbi near the West Bank city of Nablus on January 9. One Palestinian was captured in the raid and at least three more were wounded, all of whom the Israeli government claimed were members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas); two Israeli soldiers also suffered injuries. The death of the rabbi, a resident of the unauthorized settlement outpost of Havat Gil'ad, prompted Israeli defense minister Avigdor Liberman to submit a proposal to grant legal status to the community. [Haaretz, NYT, 1/18]

Jan. 29: UNRWA employees in Gaza City staged a large protest over the US decision to withhold aid funding. The following day, a meeting between a Palestinian trade group and American officials was interrupted by protesters. Days earlier, President Trump had said that the US would not resume funding the UNRWA until Palestinians agreed to resume peace talks with Israel. [WSJ, 1/25; JP, 1/29; NYT, 1/30]

Feb. 4: Defense Minister Liberman's proposal to grant legal status to Havat Gil'ad in response to the January 9 killing of an Israeli rabbi was unanimously approved by the cabinet despite earlier reports that the small outpost could not be legalized because it was built on land expropriated from Palestinian residents. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the decision, which he had endorsed. [Reuters, 2/4; Haaretz, 1/17]

Feb. 5: An Israeli rabbi was stabbed to death in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, prompting a manhunt. The suspect was identified as a 19-year-old Arab Israeli man by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). While no group claimed responsibility for the attack, Hamas framed it as an act of resistance against President Trump's decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. [BBC, 2/6]

Feb. 10: An unmanned Iranian drone that had been launched from Syria was shot down by an Israeli aircraft, according to the IDF. The intercepted drone was reportedly modeled after a US stealth aircraft that had been captured by Iran in 2011. In retaliation, the IDF sent four F-16 fighter jets to bomb the Iranian drone control site, located at an Iranian military base 55 miles southeast of the Syrian city of Homs. One of the Israeli jets crashed in northern Israel under Syrian antiaircraft fire while returning from the retaliatory mission. [LA Times, 2/10; WP, 2/11]

Feb. 11: In response to the downing of one of its fighter jets by Syrian antiaircraft missiles on February 10, Israel launched a large-scale airstrike on Syria that targeted 12 separate Syrian and Iranian airbases. The state-run Syria Arab News Agency announced that Syria considered the attack to be an act of Israeli aggression, while Iran...